Month 3: Art History

Yesterday was my first day in Art History. There wasn't too much going on. Just introductions and stuff for the new people of Full Sail. It's supposed to be your first month at Full Sail, combined with English Composition, however, since I transferred from Game Art, I had it after a couple of months.

We were in Building 4 today. I was dreading it, because they have these tiny little desks on slick tile floors that don't fit your laptop completely. Those rooms made me so nervous because I always felt like my laptop would end up in a disaster.

Thankfully, with all the new renovations, at least the classroom that we are in has carpeted floors, with tables stretched across the room and comfortable chairs. The tables have a place to plug in your laptop charger, and also have ethernet ports as well.

Update: For our first lab we had a take-home assignment. It was a virtual museum tour. There's a MS Word Document that has 20 questions and you have to find the answers on museum websites. It's pretty easy, just time consuming. I would definitely recommend doing this with a friend. It's a bit overkill by yourself.

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Month 2: Advanced Computer Graphics

Project 2: The Final

Hi everyone! It's been a while since I last made a post. I haven't received my grades back for the Jabberwocky. Today was the last day of class, and my final is finished. It's actually very odd. I've had a lot (and boy, do I mean a lot) of contempt for this project. I was never very happy for it. Probably because the Lab staff tried to kill the pre-production ideas I had when we first started. I had a friend who helped inspire ideas, so I went to have it printed. To my surprise, I was getting a lot of compliments on the piece; apparently a lot of people really liked the style and overall feel of the print. So, here's to hoping for another "A"! I've worked very hard this month, and I'm hoping to pull through with some good achievements. As for next month, I have Art History. So, that's it for now.

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Grades: Designing Computer Graphics

Here are my final grades for the first month! I'm very happy with these grades, because these are officially the highest grades I've ever made in my entire life:

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Month 2: Advanced Computer Graphics

Well, we got our grades back from the Animation Project. I got a 5/5, or in other words, 100%. Today we'll be showing off the digital paintings we did. We're expected to get the grades back from our first Practicum and the digital paintings next class, though nothing is guaranteed. Back to lecture, then. See you guys soon. =)

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Month 2: Advanced Computer Graphics

Mini Project 02: The Jabberwocky

For this mini project, we were to do a digital painting of a monster that you would probably see in a children's book. My rendition of a Jabberwocky (it could not be a dragon) was a little darker than most, however it was made appropriate: no gore or internal organs, though there are some implications. The process started with a simple sketch, scanned in and I basically used it as guidelines before fine tuning the details. In any case, this was the final painting. I've finished a day early, so thankfully I can start on my Final Project early this week. We are receiving the grades for our first Mini Project, so I'll be sure to post those once I get them.

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Month 2: Advanced Computer Graphics

We got our grades back today for the layout. The grading rubric did the grades on a scale of 0-10. I got a 9 for my layout, so that's an A. We were assigned our Mini 02 project. It's a digital painting of our version of a Jabberwocky. (I think that's how it's spelled.) I started the sketch. A lot of people said it reminded them of one of the Silent Hill monsters. I'll just upload a finished version in a few days.

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Month 2: Advanced Computer Graphics

Mini Project 01: GIF Animation

Today was a pretty busy day. I turned in my layout. I also received my final grade for the camera I did in Illustrator. I got a 95 A. I suspect the problems that kept me from getting a 100 were the metal effects on the ring. But still, a 95 is great. I'm happy with it. We also got the Midterm Practicum. The Practicums are basically the Photoshop "tests" they give us. This one we can take home, use our notes, help friends out, etc, so it should be very easy. We also had our first mini-project to create a little .gif animation that could be used either as a health bar or a loading screen. I chose a pretty simple theme:

Anyhow. Overall I suppose it was a pretty good day. I've already finished and turned in my tutorials, so I have that 3% of my grade covered. I finished my animation, so that's covered too. It looks like I'll be able to relax for sure with my little sister tomorrow at Disney World! Adios!

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Month 2: Advanced Computer Graphics

Project 1: The Layout

Now that the camera is finished, we were supposed to do a layout. One thing I will comment about in this post is the lack of communication between the course directors and the lab staff. Our teacher told us she wanted four thumbnails of our layouts. The lab staff required us to do seven different concepts, and then five layouts of the "chosen" one. I'm not complaining, I'm just pointing out a situation. I might be an exception, but I know a lot of other students get quite frustrated with the whole ordeal. If it wasn't for the extra thumbnails, I wouldn't have come up with the idea I used for my layout. I was originally going to do an ad based on time travel, but "Say Cheese" just seemed so much better. Basically I took my camera from Illustrator and imported it into Photoshop. I grabbed a couple of random images and did a LOT of editing to get them the way I wanted. Overall, I feel like the typography (while simple) is actually very effective. It supports the simplicity of the ad. The graphic combined with the type illustrates a cute concept that everyone is familiar with. Hip-hip-horr"A"!

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Month 2: Advanced Computer Graphics

Project 1: The Camera

WOW. I'm a week into Advanced Computer Graphics, and let me say, it's been one heck of a ride, so far. Our first project is the Mechanical Object. Basically, they give us a list of images (alarm clocks, cameras, toy robots, etc. etc.) and we're expected to use that as reference and produce something that's photo real. Now, you'd think after learning some Photoshop last month, it would be easy, aaand it would be. If we were allowed to even use Photoshop. That's right, this project is totally about giving us the confidence to do just about anything in Illustrator. After a grueling 65 hours, I'm finally very happy with my project and I'm prepared to turn it in. Unlike most people, I utilized my time very wisely. I stayed an extra four hours each day we had class and worked on my project, putting in another 6-12 hours at home (depending on the day). I felt like this project gave me a ton of hands-on experience and taught me how to utilize problem solving thinking skills. What I mean by problem solving skills, is there were two fundamental issues I had with my camera. The ridges, and the "EFFECT" text. The teachers insisted I used a flat black text (like the other images), but I saw an opportunity to learn and tried to produce something.

It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn close. For the ridges, the teachers told me to pen tool every little ridge. My defiance in the matter made me think outside the box. I experimented with tools they didn't teach us and produced a solid tutorial on how to do ridges like that in about 15 minutes. But again, I've worked on this project harder than I worked on anything last month. I feel like after all the work I've put into it, I've produced some excellent A-quality work.

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